John F. May, PhD

John F. May, PhD, Professor at Georgetown University, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Executives for dedication, achievements, and leadership in Demography.

The study of populations has been Dr. May’s specialty for 38 years, ever since he was assigned to research 16th century plague in Belgium during college. His work in demographic consequences during 1578, combined with his mentorship with Professor Gio Munch, led Dr. May to pursue a career that has taken him to 127 countries, six continents, and through history. He has loved the challenge of educating diverse audiences on abstract sciences, and is currently a visiting professor with the University of Brussels, the Université de Montréal, the Université Catholique de Louvain and the Paris-Sorbonne University, concurrently serving as an adjunct with Georgetown. Dr. May is a recipient of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, and can be found in the pages of Who’s Who in Science and Engineering and Who’s Who in the East.

Born in Elisabethville, Congo, to Frederic and Valentine May, Dr. May studied modern history to earn a BA, cum laude, from the University Louvain. He added a diploma in demography, cum laude, in 1975 and completed a MA, magna cum laude, from Louvain in 1985. He earned a PhD from the Paris-Sorbonne University in 1996. While pursuing his various degrees, Dr. May has advised the United Nations in Haiti and New Caledonia on demographics and population funding. He has been a consultant with UNICEF and the World Bank, and has taught with the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. From 1997 to 2012, Dr. May was a senior population specialist on Africa with the World Bank Group.

Dr. May is the author of “Africa’s Population: In Search of a Demographic Dividend”, co-edited with Dr. Hans Groth, and the author of “World Population Policies”, both from Springer. He is the recipient of a 2012 Global Media Award from the Population Institute, and was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Visiting Scholar in Washington from 1991 to 1992. He is a member of the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium, the Population Association of America, the Population Reference Bureau, Association Internationale des Démographes de Langue Française, and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. Outside of the lecture hall, Dr. May enjoys classical music, reading, cinema, and history. He is the father of Lionel John and Alexandra Anne with his wife, Anne Marie Legrand. Dr. May intends on continuing to write on the subject of demography.